Sketch Comedy

“Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-a-Sketch – you can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”

– Eric Fehrnstom, adviser to Mitt Romney

I’m a little late to the whole Etch-a-Sketch debacle, but let me point out that it does prove one thing: Anyone bemoaning the decline of American creativity can rest easily. While the U.S. may not be able to produce an iPad or find Britain on a map, Americans are still doing O.K. on comedy. In the days since Romney’s top adviser likened the candidate to an etch-a-sketch, some hilarious responses have bubbled up on the Internet. More serious pundits opine that the etch-a-sketch meme is so potent because it reinforces an existing narrative about Romney — that he has no core and erases his previous positions faster than an impatient kid shaking his red plastic toy. It seems, however, that what really story life is that it’s funny, much in the same way that Romney speeding down the freeway with his dog strapped to the station-wagon roof is funny. When Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s humorless conservative blogger, triumphantly announces that President Obama’s open-mic slip-up is a “mega-error” that “dwarfs” Fehrnstrom’s statement and is “the worst gaffe of the race,” she misses the point entirely. The etch-a-sketch meme, like the dog-on-roof story, went viral because it was so ripe for parody. Obama’s conversation with the Russian president is hardly side-splitting material.

One of the best imagines to turn up online conflates the two funniest Romney stories and was picked up by Buzzfeed:

Plus, it complements this line from an AP article: “The episode, likely to dog Romney in the coming days . . . .”

*****

Etch-a-sketch isn’t the only classic toy appropriate for the campaign trail, though. Here’s my contribution to the fun:

If Republican Candidate Were Toys . . . .

Mitt Romney may be too stiff to have a sense of humor (then again, what do you call “the trees are the right height”?), but Fehrnstrom was able to laugh at himself. He tweeted:

Etch A Sketch stock is up? Psst, I’ll mention Mr. Potato Head next. Buy Hasbro.

Maybe not such bad advice. Wonkblog offered this chart, showing the gaffe-fueled spike in Ohio Art’s stock price.

The Washington Post debuted a new feature, “Comments of the Week,” which presumably rewards the 10% of comments on the site that don’t degenerate into ad hominem attacks or all-caps shouting matches. A reader called “gardyloo” left the following remark:

The main difference between an Etch-a-Sketch and Mitt Romney is that with the Etch-a-Sketch the control knobs are visible.

An entire website went up at www.etchasketchmittromney.com that generates pairs of conflicting statements from the candidate. Example: “I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life” shows up alongside “I’m not a big game hunter . . . I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will.” Yes, Mr. Romney often gets out his shotgun when there’s a mouse in the house.

 

Pinterest users have assembled a collection of Romney’s favorite classic toys:

 

Finally, Etch-a-Sketch maker Ohio Art is getting in on the game itself, launching an ad campaign that plays off its sudden notoriety. The creative director of Team Detroit, the company’s ad agency, remarked that “we wanted to steer the direction of the conversation in a little bit more of a positive direction.” As you might expect, the ads are carefully non-partisan and riff on the viral nature of the incident itself, not the comparison to Romney’s erase-and-replace politics.

Conservatives (like the aforementioned Rubin) are feeling vindicated by a recent Pew Research Center poll showing that 55 percent of respondents hadn’t heard about the Etch-a-Sketch gaffe at all. Among those who did know about the incident, only 11 percent said it made them less likely to support Romney; 29 percent said it made no difference. Well, thank goodness Americans aren’t basing their votes on whatever’s most popular on BuzzFeed at the moment. You can’t argue, though, that the Etch-a-Sketch humor wasn’t a refreshing break from the usual campaign rhetoric. This week, the candidates returned to attempting to outdo each other on the evils of the Obama administration. Romney: Obama surrenders to “our number one geopolitical enemy.” (Russia — really? I thought it was Iran.) Santorum: Obama “told Russia we’re not going to defend ourselves.” Gingrich: “Elect me president, and we’ll take out Putin with an Earth-orbit death ray.”

OK, I made that last one up. But it sort of proves the point: All the Etch-a-Sketch talk was labeled a distraction, but it’s not as if it distracted from anything more serious or adult. In comparison to the usual block-throwing temper-tantrums that have characterized the 2012 Nursery School Primary, the ability to use an Etch-a-Sketch — dexterity! hand-eye coordination! — just might be a step up.

Hot-Button Issues: Abortion, Taxes . . . Salmon?

An editorial in my local paper bemoans the cancellation of the final Republican debate, originally scheduled for March 19 in Portland. The candidates, writes the ed board, “have yet to focus on many of the issues that are of vital importance to Oregonians and Northwesterners.” Seemingly unaware that the issues most important to Oregonians are the same issues — the economy, “entitlement” programs, how many cabinet departments each candidate promises to slash — important to the rest of the country, the paper then goes on to opine that “Without a debate, it may be difficult for Oregonians to figure out where the candidates stand on the state’s medical marijuana law and protections for imperiled salmon species in the Columbia River basin.”

Well, yes. It will be difficult to figure out where the candidates stand on these issues because the candidates have probably not even considered the issues. (Ron Paul, who would legalize marijuana full-stop, without monkeying around with this “medical” business, is the exception.) Why each state feels entitled to address its parochial concerns on the national stage is beyond me. At the Jan. 26 debate in Florida, the candidates went into mind-numbing detail on American policy toward Cuba, a topic which anyone outside of the Palmetto state devotes very little attention. Newt Gingrich in particular has made a point of pandering to whichever community he happens to land in, from talking up a new VA hospital in New Hampshire to advocating the expansion of the Port of Jacksonville in Florida. At one debate, Romney brushed off “this idea of going state to state and promising people what they want to hear, promising hundreds of billions of dollars to make people happy.” Besides, if there are Republicans in Oregon basing their primary votes on Rick Santorum’s take on federal timber payments or fish management, I would suggest they reconsider their priorities. Really, when a candidate wants to tear down the wall between church and state, does it matter what he thinks about a few fish?

The Register-Guard’s professed curiosity about Northwestern issues is especially curious considering the ease with which any moderately intelligent person can predict the candidates’ responses. For the slow types that apparently make up the paper’s ed board, I offer the following primer:

Mitt Romney: Favored protecting salmon under the Endangered Species Act in 2005. Now denies he was ever pro-fish.

Ron Paul: Sorry, Fish and Wildlife Services was eliminated when the Interior Department got the axe. But don’t worry — the free market will save the salmon. (Just hope the free market isn’t hungry for fish sticks.)

Newt Gingrich: Will enable fish to self-defend by outfitting streams with laser-guided defense missiles. Alternatively, may consider shipping salmon to Mars to aid in terraforming project.

Rick Santorum: Clearly humans have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Rejects the “phony theology” of environmentalism.